ASL Intercom brings versatile communications to Tivoli Vredenburg

Designing a communications system for such a complex venue as Utrecht’s new Tivoli Vredenburg was a daunting task, but ASL Intercom equipment proved equal to it. Designed to attract over 500,000 visitors each year, the venue covers 31,000sqm and features five auditoriums, 22 dressing rooms, 11 circulation spaces and 24 bars/restaurants.

The city’s Tivoli and Vredenburg venues have been major centres of music for over 30 years. Bringing them together under one roof with the city’s Jazz Centre was achieved by incorporating the existing Vredenburg symphony hall into a brand new €150m venue and adding four major new performance spaces around it.

To make each venue within the new Tivoli Vredenburg as versatile as possible, the 22 dressing rooms are not allocated to particular auditoria/stages. This made the job even more difficult for Utrecht-based Switch Concepts, the company tasked with installing a comprehensive communications system.

The company presented Tivoli Vredenburg with a choice of three systems and the venue’s technical team chose an ASL digital system as the best solution.

“In a building with nine floors and five different stages, a highly flexible intercom system is required,” said Switch Concept’s Frank Verbeek. “The ability to have both daisychain and star wiring topologies was a big advantage. ASL’s configuration software was also a key reason why we chose the system, because it is very fast and straightforward to use and it provides all the power you need for this type of environment.”

All of the systems’ speaker stations and beltpacks are powered via the Cat6 intercom lines, meaning that they don’t need a separate power connection wherever they’re located.

Key to the installation is a DS 130L paging loudspeaker installed in every dressing room, all with override function. Each speaker can be quickly reassigned to any auditorium’s comms in the system’s ConfigurIT software. Also, even if the volume of the stage relay has been turned down, intercom announcements come through to the speaker at a preset level.

“Tivoli Vredenburg is the Netherlands’ biggest live music venue and we are really pleased that an ASL system was chosen for such a prestigious installation,” said ASL sales and marketing director Susan McLohon. “Tivoli Vredenburg’s core value is that it is ‘for everyone’ and the ASL system will help to ensure that shows run as smoothly as possible for artists ranging from the highest-profile star to the most amateur group.”